The Lemon Twigs

As the Lemon Twigs, brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario channel the energy of 1970s power pop, AM Gold and mellow singer/songwriter fare, often adding a healthy love of musical theater and an over-the-top performance display. Sons of acclaimed songwriter Ronnie D'Addario, the brothers began writing songs at young ages and delivered their 2016 debut album, Do Hollywood, on 4AD at the tail-end of their teenage years. Success came quickly, with critical acclaim and a string of TV appearances as well as extensive touring. They evolved from the conceptual eccentricity of their 2018 sophomore LP, Go to School, to a more varied but no less bombastic set of songs on their 2020 album Songs for the General Public to the emotionally naked sentiments of more subtle but still wildly eclectic records like 2023's Everything Harmony and 2026's Look for Your Mind! Long Island brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario started the Lemon Twigs while they were still in their teens, each playing multiple instruments, counting guitar, keyboards, drums, horns, and strings among their proficiencies. The boys were raised in a musical home, sons of working musician parents. Along with an interest in theater, early musical influences like Harry Nilsson, Todd Rundgren, Wings, the Zombies, and other '60s and '70s Baroque pop figures played heavily into the band's sound at a formative time. In 2015, their earliest output arrived in the form of the cassette-only album What We Know. Significant buzz had formed around the group even then, and they signed to indie superpower 4AD, releasing their "These Words" b/w "As Long as We're Together" single in 2016 and selling the 7" mostly while on a tour supporting Carseat Headrest. Their debut album, Do Hollywood, arrived later in the year, produced by Foxygen's Jonathan Rado. The Lemon Twigs embarked on a tour in support of the album with a live version of the band that included Danny Ayala on keyboards and Megan Zeankowski on bass. They returned in September 2017 with Brothers of Destruction, a home-recorded EP written largely during the sessions for Do Hollywood featuring a handful of live staples from their touring set. In August of the next year, their sophomore album, Go to School, arrived, a massive production conceptualized as a musical about a chimpanzee raised by human parents. The ambitious Broadway-inspired record included guest appearances by both of the D'Addario brothers' parents as well as power pop legends Todd Rundgren and Jody Stephens. In April 2020, the band returned with The Lemon Twigs LIVE, a fundraiser for Coalition for the Homeless culled from live-to-tape recordings from shows in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. It was followed in August by their third studio full-length, the Rado-co-produced Songs for the General Public. It spent a week on Billboard's Top Current Album Sales chart (number 61). The brothers contributed to Tim Heidecker's album Fear of Death, which saw release a month later, and over the next few years also appeared on records by Rundgren and Weyes Blood. The Twigs began work on their next album in 2020 and spent months refining their new material before resurfacing in early 2023 with the self-produced single "Corner of My Eye," the first song shared in advance of their fourth LP, Everything Harmony. In addition to their long-running love of glam and theatrical power pop, the band looked to the influence of both mainstream and outsider folk artists for their new set of songs, evoking Simon & Garfunkel on some tracks and Moondog on others. Everything Harmony was released in May 2023 and was the band's first album with new label Captured Tracks. Almost exactly a year later, their next record, A Dream Is All We Know, was released. It was recorded immediately after the completion of Everything Harmony during a period of intense productivity and featured more string arrangements than other Twigs albums. The group's next album found the D'Addario brothers opening their sound up with contributions from members of their live band and more, including bass from Danny Ayala, drums from Reza Matin, and input from Tchotchke's Eva Chambers. This version of the band expanded the Lemon Twigs' studio practice that usually consisted of the brothers recording all the instruments themselves, and resulted in the more open sound of 2026's Look for Your Mind! ~ Neil Z. Yeung & Fred Thomas